Ukraine's drone campaign against Russia has widened to a new domain: the data centres powering the country's artificial-intelligence efforts. Russian tech giant Yandex has confirmed that Ukrainian drones struck two of its AI data hubs in consecutive days, partly disabling a facility in the Kaluga region southwest of Moscow, in what Kyiv frames as mirror-image retaliation for Russian attacks on Ukrainian digital infrastructure.
Table of Contents
- Two strikes, two days
- A mirror of Russia's own campaign
- The missile and energy campaign continues
- Why data centres matter in modern war
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Sources
- Related reading
Two strikes, two days
The latest blow landed on Friday, when Ukrainian drones hit a Yandex data centre in the Kaluga region and partly put it out of action, the company said. A day earlier, a separate Ukrainian attack shut down a major data hub in Sasovo, in the Ryazan region — a site where two of the three supercomputers used to develop the company's AI models are housed.
Yandex, which is heavily involved in Russia's AI development efforts, said the attacks had struck at the core of its operations and that it was trying to maintain its services. "Our teams are working day and night to keep services running and help those affected by the incident," the company said in a statement. The company operates numerous apps that many Russians consider essential, as well as social media networks, and it functions under close government observation.
A mirror of Russia's own campaign
Kyiv has framed the strikes as a direct response to Moscow's own targeting of Ukrainian data hubs. "We always respond in mirror-like fashion," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Thursday, following the Ryazan strike. "You all know, they have been hitting and continue to hit our data centres. We are responding. I can't share all the details."
Russia has struck several Ukrainian data centres and telecommunications infrastructure facilities over the past month, including targets in central Kyiv. Damage from the attacks has forced some services to suspend operations, and roughly 100,000 households suffered temporary internet outages after one attack.
The missile and energy campaign continues
Alongside the digital strikes, Kyiv continues its campaign targeting Russia's missile production and energy infrastructure, aiming both to reduce the air strikes against which Ukraine has struggled to defend and to damage Moscow's economic ability to wage war.
Ukraine's military said it had hit three facilities involved in missile production across Russia overnight, including a factory in the Tver region making missile components and a centre for disassembling intercontinental ballistic missiles in the Nizhny Novgorod region. In a statement on Telegram, the General Staff said the Russian facility for the "liquidation of intercontinental ballistic missiles" was hit to degrade Russia's ability to source explosives and rocket fuel.
Nizhny Novgorod's governor said that one serviceman was killed repelling the attack while drone debris caused "minimal" damage to infrastructure. A drone attack sparked a fire at a plant in Redkino in the Tver region, but it was quickly extinguished, the local governor said. The Ukhta oil refinery belonging to the state giant Lukoil, 1,900km (1,180 miles) from the Ukrainian border, was also struck, according to Zelenskyy.
Meanwhile, Russia's air campaign has continued to hit civilians, despite the Kremlin's insistence that it only attacks military targets. Overnight strikes killed one and injured seven in the city of Zaporizhzhia, regional defence official Ivan Fedorov said on the Telegram messaging app. Russia also struck a cargo vessel in Ukraine's Black Sea port of Mykolaiv, the Ministry of Defence in Moscow said, according to state news agency RIA Novosti. The ministry said the vessel was being used to supply the Ukrainian military.
Why data centres matter in modern war
Targeting data centres represents a notable escalation in the character of the drone war. AI infrastructure sits at the intersection of civilian and military use: the same computing power that trains chatbots and powers search engines can process satellite imagery, plan logistics, and run the analytics behind modern warfare. By striking Yandex's AI hubs, Ukraine is signalling that it views Russia's tech sector as part of the war machine — while betting that disrupting widely used civilian services adds pressure on Moscow. The question now is whether Russia responds in kind, and how far the digital front of this war extends.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which Yandex facilities were struck?
Two data hubs: one in the Kaluga region southwest of Moscow, which was partly disabled on Friday, and one in Sasovo in the Ryazan region, struck a day earlier. The Sasovo site houses two of the three supercomputers Yandex uses to develop its AI models.
Why is Ukraine targeting data centres?
Kyiv says it is responding in kind to Russian strikes on Ukrainian data centres and telecom infrastructure. Ukraine has also made the digital realm part of its broader strategy of hitting the infrastructure — energy, weapons plants, and now computing — that sustains Russia's war effort.
How does this fit into the wider campaign?
The data-centre strikes ran alongside attacks on missile production sites in the Tver and Nizhny Novgorod regions and on the Lukoil refinery at Ukhta, some 1,900km from the Ukrainian border — part of a sustained effort to degrade Russia's strike capacity and economy.
